St. Peter Classic starts Wednesday
Kevin Fitzgerald takes over as convenor of 50-team high school hockey tourney
There are a couple of noticeable differences at the 15th edition of the St. Peter Classic.
The province’s largest high school hockey tournament will feature 50 teams, 42 in four boys divisions and eight in two girls divisions on Wednesday and Thursday at nine area ice pads.
One big change is that after 14 years as convener Steve Stanlick has retired from teaching and now Kevin Fitzgerald, who also replaced Stanlick as head coach of the Saints boys team, is now running the show. Stanlick has not disappeared as he’s volunteered to run things at the Evinrude Centre one of seven arenas being used along with the Memorial Centre, Kinsmen Civic Centre and rinks in Douro, Ennismore, Lakefield and Norwood.
The tournament is in capable hands, though, as Fitzgerald has his share of experience running tournaments from his days working at Canadian Hockey Enterprises.
“It’s been an undertaking for sure,” Fitzgerald said. “There are a lot of hours put into it. I’ve done the schedule about six different times to make sure as many requests were met as possible for the teams coming in from out of town. I must say the years I spent working at Canadian Hockey Enterprises scheduling 50, 60, 70 team tournaments definitely helped.”
Another change is that for the first time the tournament has a major sponsor with McDonald’s offering some financial support.
“Jamie Campbell and McDonald’s have come on board as a sponsor for the first time,” Fitzgerald said. “We’e never really had a title sponsor before. He’s helping to fund some of the prizes teams get when they win a championship. That’s been a new addition to the tournament this year.”
This is the second year for girls teams and they’re up two from six last year.
“Hopefully as the tournament grows year over year and we get that new twin-pad up and running in 2019 we’ll be able to grow the women’s division even more,” Fitzgerald said.
St. Peter and Holy Cross will enter teams in the girls’ division to compete against six visiting teams.
On the boys side there are 16 teams in the A division, 10 in B, eight in C and eight in a junior division. St. Peter’s and St. Mary’s are the Kawartha league teams entered in the A pool while Campbellford and Haliburton are in B and Adam Scott, Crestwood, Holy Cross, Lakefield College School and St. Thomas Aquinas are in C. In the junior division, St. Peter, Holy Cross and Norwood have entered teams. Visiting teams are coming from as far as Montreal and Quebec City in the east, Sault Ste. Marie to the north and Sarnia to the west.
Teams to watch in the A division include Orangeville who won the Mahler Classic in St. Catharines earlier this season and the defending Saints’ Classic champions Denis Morris from St. Catharines. Morris lost to Orangeville in the Mahler Classic final.
St. Peter reached the quarterfinal of the Saints Classic last year after winning it for the first time in 2016. They went 0-3 at the Mahler this year and while they are younger than in recent years Fitzgerald expects them to be competitive.
“We’re young. We have two Grade 9’s on the team; two big bodies who are smart and can move the puck. We did lose a lot of firepower with guys like Will Hickey and Clay Coles not able to come back but we are a very well-rounded team. We don’t give up a lot of shots. We play defence-first and sort of let the offence come as it comes.”
NOTE: You can download the Game On mobile app to access tournament schedules and scores.